semilunar

Definitions

from The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 4th Edition

adj. Shaped like a half-moon; crescent-shaped.

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

adj. Shaped like a half-moon; crescent-shaped.

n. The lunate bone, or semilunar bone.

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

adj. Shaped like a half moon.

n. The semilunar bone.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

Resembling a half-moon in form; half-moon shaped; loosely, in anat., bot., and zoology, crescentic in shape; crescentiform; meniscoid; concavo-convex: noting several structures, without much regard for precision in the implied meaning.

The lower concave border of the posterior layer of the sheath of the rectus muscle, lying about midway between the umbilicus and publis.

Same as rectovesical fold (which see, under rectovesical).

The interclavicular notch.

The suprascapular notch.

Synonyms Semilunar, Sigmoid. In anatomy, formerly (as still sometimes) these words described the same crescentic figure, for the reason that a later form of the Greek letter signia, Σ, was like a C. The two forms are distinguished in structures later named. Compare sigmoid (cavity of the ulna) with sigmoid (flexure of the rectum), under sigmoid, a.

Etymologies

semi- +‎ lunar (Wiktionary)

Examples

Oh no! but what dull ache is this in that obscurely sensitive region, somewhere below the heart, where the nervous centre called the semilunar ganglion lies unconscious of itself until a great grief or a mastering anxiety reaches it through all the non-conductors which isolate it from ordinary impressions?

He wrote one whole paragraph on the topic, and here it is, in its entirety; it was presented briefly as part of a long list of human rudimentary structures, such as wisdom teeth, muscles of the ear, and the semilunar fold of the eye.

The celebrated Hieronymus Fabricius of Aquapendente, a most skilful anatomist, and venerable old man, or, as the learned Riolan will have it, Jacobus Silvius, first gave representations of the valves in the veins, which consist of raised or loose portions of the inner membranes of these vessels, of extreme delicacy, and a sigmoid or semilunar shape.

There are, as everyone knows, three sigmoid or semilunar valves situated at the orifice of the pulmonary artery, which effectually prevent the blood sent into the vessel from returning into the cavity of the heart.

The dead pain in the semilunar ganglion (which I must remind my reader is a kind of stupid, unreasoning brain, beneath the pit of the stomach, common to man and beast, which aches in the supreme moments of life, as when the dam loses her young ones, or the wild horse is lassoed) stopped short.

-- From the left auricle, the blood is forced past the bicuspid valve to the left ventricle; thence it is driven through the semilunar valves into the great aorta, the main trunk of the arterial system.